Field of the Invention
Embodiments are directed towards image-guided surgery, and more particularly CT-guided, MR-guided, fluoroscopy-based or surface-based image-guided surgery, wherein images of a portion of a patient are taken in the preoperative or intraoperative setting and used during surgery for guidance.
Background
In the practice of surgery, an operating surgeon is generally required to look back and forth between the patient and a monitor displaying patient anatomical information for guidance in operation. In this manner, a type of mental mapping is made by the surgeon to understand the location of the target structures. However, this type of mental mapping is difficult, has a steep learning curve, and compromises the accuracy of the information used.
Equipment has been developed by many companies to provide intraoperative interactive surgery planning and display systems, mixing live video of the external surface of the patient with interactive computer generated models of internal anatomy obtained from medical diagnostic imaging data of the patient. The computer images and the live video are coordinated and displayed to a surgeon in real time during surgery, allowing the surgeon to view internal and external structures and the relationship between them simultaneously, and adjust the surgery accordingly.
Preoperative or intraoperative image registration with surface reconstruction has been done in conventional surgery navigation systems either with a single 3D scanner device that functions at the same time as video camera (e.g. time-of-flight cameras). These conventional systems display the surgeon's main viewpoint, or a video camera or stereoscopic video cameras that are used as viewpoint for the surgeon are used for processing a surface reconstruction. These conventional systems may enhance the surface reconstruction or image registration with other techniques, such as optical or infrared techniques, markers, etc. However, these systems are limited in the availability of precise 3D surfaces, in their precision and speed of image registration of preoperative or intraoperative image with the 3D surfaces, and in blending such registered images with the viewpoint of the surgeon.
Accordingly needs exist for more effective systems and methods that combine real-time preoperative images with virtual graphics associated with the preoperative images, wherein the combination of the preoperative images and virtual graphics is displayed on a stereoscopic, see through, head mounted display.